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Success through differenceWed, 14 Aug 2019 13:34:34 +0000en-GB
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3232132223106A redemption story: From troubled youth to Downing Streethttps://arrivaleducate.com/2019/08/09/its-hard-to-get-ahead-if-youre-from-a-community-like-mine/
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 14:14:46 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=55522Arrival Education have known Shafik Ali since he was 14. Like many young men from challenging community situations, Shafik has battled to break free of the difficulties inherent in his community.

A redemption story: From troubled youth to Downing Street

Arrival Education have known Shafik Ali since he was 14. Like many young men from challenging community situations, Shafik has battled to break free of the difficulties inherent in his community. All who know him look forward to seeing how his career unfolds. Shafik is studying Chemistry, at the University of Surrey and is currently looking for a placement in the environment or low carbon energy field.

Town called malice - a challenging start

Growing up a British Asian Muslim on one of London’s most troubled estates, the Mozart Estate, in West London, the pressure to fit in was crushing.

On my estate, the currency was violence. Who was the toughest, hardest, the most dangerous? It was a culture of ‘eat or be eaten’. I just wanted to survive, to fit in. I couldn’t rise above it so I joined in. In fact, I excelled at being bad.

At 12 years old my father passed away. I blamed myself. He left behind 4 boys and my mum with no income. We were desperate. So I stole and dealt drugs to feed us.

At 13, I was escorted from school to the police station as I brought a knife to school.

By 14, I had multiple appearances at youth and magistrate courts. I was put ‘on tag’ by the crown court.

The local police knew me by my first name and I had my solicitors number on speed dial!

I carried a knife, I sold crack-cocaine and I didn’t care about anyone. It wasn’t good.

New model army

When my dad died, I latched onto the men on my estate. I wanted to be liked. But I also wanted to be like them. Have their power. To create the same fear in others.

Looking back, I didn’t make a great deal of money. It’s amazing how many drug dealers live with their mums and have a car on lease. Although I had a reputation, I wasn’t going anywhere. I was also playing with fire. Every time you’re stabbed, it’s a roll of the dice. I was lucky. Unlike many of my friends I survived. Just.

However, it was a series of moments that shaped my future.

Arrival partnered me with a coach – James Arnold, now Chief Client Officer at Investec. He was Jewish and didn’t care that I was Muslim. He listened and took an interest in me. He was really smart. He could put things in a way that made sense. I will never forget his generosity and kindness.

Shafik Ali

Chemistry Student at University of Surrey

The dice rolled deuces

My best friend was stabbed to death over… well, basically nothing. It showed me how I had taken ‘fitting in’ too far. We didn’t even understand what we were doing, or why. It was mindless stuff.

But then I was selected for Arrival Education’s Success for Life programme. Game changer. I was given loads of amazing opportunities and exposure to top corporates.

Arrival partnered me with a coach - James Arnold, now Chief Client Officer at Investec. He was Jewish and didn't care that I was Muslim. He listened and took an interest in me. He was really smart. He could put things in a way that made sense. I will never forget his generosity and kindness.

Things started to change for the better

At 16, I won funding to fit-out a local youth gym on my estate.

I was invited to Downing Street twice - first to meet then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown to talk about the new Green Economy and a programme I did with The Eden Project and then again, after my GCSEs to meet with the deputy PM, Nick Clegg.

I was on BBC National news talking about my good school grades.

At 19, I’d booked over £250K of legitimate business in my gap year job.

By 21, I bought my family a house in Bangladesh.

Arrival Education allowed me to see a different life. With different sorts of people. Doing different sorts of things. I was now on the inside looking out for once, and not the outside looking in. I was listening to real success stories that made it feel like I too could achieve things and change my world for the better.

A new perspective from up on the hill

When I was a kid, I would break in and smoke on the top of the tallest local building block on the estate and look at The City. In the distance, you’d see all these glass buildings, and wonder, what happens there? Who works there? What do they do? How do earn a living? And what do you need to do to have the top office?

I was looking at what I now know to be The Gherkin.

Who knew that one day, thanks to an event with Coutts through Arrival Education, I would be inside the Gherkin looking back across to my estate?

I was looking back at my estate, but also my past in a way. It allowed me to reflect on the distance I had travelled. It gave me some perspective.

I made a decision to do more than simply accept the ‘hand’ I was dealt. I wanted to be successful in spite of all the voices, who said I would never amount to much, waiting for me to slip back. It’s hard to break out. It takes courage to break the cycles.

I no longer was willing to be poor. I stopped wasting time. I didn’t want my children to see or do the things I’ve seen or done, in order to feed my family. It brutalises you. I think it took Arrival a long time to help me be open. To stop being so angry. Stop being such a smart-ass!

Wasted youth, wasted capital

Don’t get me wrong. I learnt a lot of things surviving my estate. The hustle, drive, perseverance and persuasion. Fast decision-making, under insane and dangerous pressure. These were skills we learnt on the block. I become very good at numbers and looking for an angle. Those qualities are part of my DNA. They are things you cannot learn through normal academics. No one can teach you that stuff.

There was so much talent in my community. It breaks your heart to see it wasted because they don’t know how to apply their talents. Programmes like Arrival’s only come along once in a blue moon. My luck was that I managed to grab it and hold on. Most don’t.

I once looked up the name of the person my estate was named after. We all learn to play on the things put in front of us. Mozart just did it better than everyone else. Perhaps given what I had to play with, he would have been proud of me?

About the author

Shafik is studying Chemistry, at the University of Surrey and is currently looking for a placement in the environment or low carbon energy field, in finance or research. Please email us if you can help.

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]]>55522Want to attract socially diverse talent into London? Open your own doors to themhttps://arrivaleducate.com/2019/08/09/attract-diverse-interns/
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 08:40:08 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=55473Keen to attract a more socially diverse talent base to your internship programmes? We have come up with a simple and free way to help you widen your applicant pool.

Want to attract socially diverse talent into London? Open your own doors to them

Often D&I commentary only focuses on the problems in the industry that need fixing, rather than solutions. At Arrival Education we create solutions that will help companies deliver real change; we explore one of these here.

Companies are increasingly looking for ways to make themselves more attractive to socially diverse university students. Yet, many of these diverse, bright young people are frozen out of internships in top companies because of where they live and not having access to affordable accommodation. We think we have a zero-cost solution: renting out employee’s underutilised properties, thereby avoiding otherwise steep rental fees.

Barriers to entry

Research done by the Sutton Trust showed that 40% of interns cited external barriers to taking up an internship, such as being unable to afford it, or being unable to move to a city to take up an opportunity.

40%

The "minor" things

Today, completing an internship is seen as a prerequisite for graduates wanting to land their dream job. Given the significance hiring managers attach to internships, it’s no wonder that they are highly competitive. We recently helped an employer to recruit two interns and were 30 times oversubscribed. What’s more, there is an unequal playing field. Those who are “in-the-know” have a much higher chance of success, an issue Rick Bacon wrote about in our June edition of The Inclusion. I believe it goes beyond who you know; it’s also about where you live.

When recruiting for internships, many companies offer to reimburse travel costs. This helps make opportunities accessible to those living in the suburbs and commuter towns. But what about those living outside of commuting distance, realistically more than 90 minutes from a city?

Accommodation is expensive, especially in London. According to the Government’s Valuation Office Agency, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat in London is £1,350 per month, whilst the average gross monthly pay for London interns is £1,500. Even for those earning an above-average wage, the need for advance deposit and rent payments puts a significant strain on already tight budgets. Unless a young person is lucky enough to have friends or relatives in London, they cannot afford to take up an internship, and therefore won’t even apply.

In some cases, companies provide bursaries. However, in addition to the cost of the accommodation itself, companies are also likely to incur administration costs. Consequently, few companies outside of the biggest ones offer accommodation support. Thousands of young people are currently frozen out.

The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat in London is £1,350 per month, whilst the average gross monthly pay for London interns is £1,500.

A readymade solution already exists

You might be inclined to think it’s a supply and demand problem: it is not possible to find accommodation for those who are excluded. But that’s not the case. From my experience in the professional services industry, I know that accommodation exists through a number of sources:

1. Many organisations already have partnerships with property management companies. These companies provide serviced apartments, and large firms often benefit from discounted rates. They could open these up to prospective interns.

2. Partners own apartments in central London that they may use for one or two nights a week throughout the year. The summer holiday months, when internships most frequently occur, are likely to be when these properties are least utilised.

3. Your staff may be open to hosting somebody. Have you considered asking? Your employees could volunteer spare rooms or sofa beds to interns, under a same-sex requirement in case of the latter. You could even financially incentivise staff to do so; many interns would be willing to pay rent, so long as it’s below what they would otherwise have to pay for their own place.

Have you ever considered these options? Do you think your partners or staff might want to support a prospective intern in taking their first step on the career ladder? We think it’s a win-win.

Few companies outside of the biggest ones offer accommodation support. Thousands of young people are currently frozen out.

Company and employee benefits

Demonstrating your commitment to diversity

Authenticity is held in high esteem by today’s early years talent, who want to work for values-driven companies, genuinely open to all applicants. Many companies talk about being inclusive, fewer walk the walk. Being bold here would set you out in the marketplace. The interns would acknowledge how much you value their being there, before they even start the role.

Access to a more socially and diverse talent pool

More diverse organisations are proven to be more successful ones. Research by McKinsey has shown that companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity are 33% more likely to outperform on profitability.

Intern benefits

Increased internship experience

Gaining a greater depth of experience from their internship. If they cohabit with your staff, they get to know them on a personal level, getting a real sense of what kind of people your company employs. That helps them decide if they want to stay on if they are offered a full-time role.

Reducing stress

Reducing the stress around their whole internship experience. Having their accommodation secured early, and guaranteed for their whole time working for you, takes a huge burden off their minds. This should help them focus on the day-to-day of the internship, improving their performance during their time with you.

We are aware that the idea is not without risks: you’re giving them access to your property. But think about it – what incentive would they have to abuse your trust? They are keen to impress you, and being early in their career they would not want to do anything to damage their future prospects.

Forward this to your HR department

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The movement has already started

The concept is not new. Think about the growth of Airbnb over the last ten years. The economy is experiencing a boom in “asset sharing” businesses, from storage through companies like Stashbee, to cars with Drivy. What’s more, the concept is increasingly being applied with a social value mission. A government-funded initiative called Fairbnb was established two years ago in Croydon, South London. Under a similar principle to this idea, it looks to provide temporary rental accommodation at affordable rates for those most in need, by matching underutilised capacity to need.

Why not do something now?

All of these businesses require an ‘online marketplace’ to be created: people on both sides of the exchange need to be found, and technology developed. In this case though, you could launch it now, at no cost. You don’t need to develop an app to connect supply and demand.

With the recruitment cycle for next year’s spring and summer internships starting soon, now is the perfect time to ask the question to your staff: could we do this? It’s a great way to demonstrate your desire to address the inequity experienced by socially diverse talent, whilst helping your business unlock the diversity dividend at the same time.

If you like the idea and would like to expand the quality of the talent coming into your internship programme, forward this to your HR director. Arrival Education can help you find you the talent and bring it to you. Get in touch with us to find out more.

About the author

Matt is a Programmes Manager at Arrival Education. Before joining Arrival, he worked as a Management Consultant, with PwC and Elixirr. He decided to make the switch so as he could focus full time on his passion: promoting equal access to opportunities in education and work for all young people, regardless of their background. His role here means that he sees first hand how hungry our network are for work experience, and he knows how important that first opportunity is. He believes solutions such as this take us one step closer to levelling the playing field.

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]]>55473Micro-incivilities in the workplace and what you can do about ithttps://arrivaleducate.com/2019/08/08/micro-incivilities-in-the-workplace/
Thu, 08 Aug 2019 16:17:10 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=55402The adoption of a 'colour-blind' approach in the name of diversity is nonsensical, hypocritical and exposes the biases of the people who are designing the strategies.

Micro-incivilities in the workplace and what you can do about it

We’re delighted to have Binna Kindola as our guest author this month for The Inclusion. Binna is one of the most established, respected and recognised voices in the D&I community. His current book ‘Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference’ investigates how office racism has transmuted into more insidious, but less obvious forms, including what he terms as micro-incivilities.

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The "minor" things

I was with a client recently discussing incidents of harassment that had occurred in the organisation. I made two observations of our conversation: first we had focused exclusively on gender and second, the examples were all quite crude and blatant. When I gave examples of the more subtle behaviours that minorities experience, the response was “we need to tackle the big stuff first, before we move onto the more minor things.”

Colour-blind diversity policies

This response is sadly is typical of many organisations’ approaches to diversity and inclusion. Gender dominates, with only the occasional nod to other issues.

In fact, the focus is narrower even than gender – it’s not just women but white women. When you look at the initiatives undertaken (such as women’s leadership development programmes or a mentoring scheme for women) you typically find few, if any, women of colour.

Gender policies, supposedly designed to advance diversity in organisations, in most instances, ignore race, and consequently racism, completely. The adoption of a ‘colour-blind’ approach in the name of diversity is nonsensical, hypocritical and exposes the biases of the people who are designing the strategies.

Modern racism is subtle, indirect and ambiguous. Many people refer to these behaviours as micro-aggressions.

Binna Kindola

Micro-incivilities & their impact

The senior leader in the example did not only prioritise gender over race but also made a distinction between ‘minor’ and ‘major’ actions. When it comes to racism, the common view is that it consists of crude, objectionable, offensive actions – the sort of things no reasonable person would ever do. It is the kind of things that the media love to cover and when we learn about them we feel outraged. At another level though, many people in the majority will also feel comforted: “Racists behave in these ways. I would never do this. Therefore I am not a racist.”

However, like a virus racism has mutated. The obviously offensive actions have been termed by psychologists as old-fashioned racism. Modern racism, on the other hand, is subtle, indirect and ambiguous. Many people refer to these behaviours as micro-aggressions. I prefer the term micro-incivilities because this connects them to something called Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB).

And crucially OCB has been shown to be related to effective performance of teams. Micro-incivilities are daily, commonplace behaviours or aspects of the working environment which signal to out-groups that they do not belong. Sometimes referred to as everyday racism, they include:

– Constantly interrupting minority members

– Criticising minorities’ performance and yet never offering any praise

– Never looking at someone in meetings

– Constantly getting the minority team member’s name wrong or calling them by the name of the other minority in the team

These actions all say “You’re not welcome or valued here”.

Their power comes from those in the majority believing that they are trivial or insignificant. In fact, micro-incivilities cause more distress because it is difficult to know how to interpret them and to respond to them.

To make matters worse

To complain about these ‘minor’ actions only makes things worse. In a survey Pearn Kandola carried out in 2018, 60% of black people and 42% of Asian people said they had experienced racism at work (of those, 20% had been subject to verbal and psychical abuse – old fashioned racism is definitely alive and kicking).

The least effective action to resolve these issues was to report it to HR. Fewer than a quarter (22%) of those who reported the incidents to HR felt it had been dealt with effectively. In dismissing the grievance the complainant can find themselves described as ‘playing the race card’. Not only is the complaint dismissed, but, with a nasty and clever inversion, the victim becomes the perpetrator and perpetrator the victim. Thus heaping humiliation on top of the distress.

What can we do?

We can make the situation better, however. First, we need leaders and key people like those in HR to recognise that racism hasn’t gone away, but it is different than it was.

One striking result from our 2018 survey was that the most effective action to tackle racism was to deal with an incident immediately. Furthermore, the people most likely to take action where white people. The one drawback was that those in the majority were far less likely to identify the subtle behaviours as racism. So education is important so we can all recognise racial micro-incivilities when they occur.

In addition, though we need to listen and to empathise with the experiences of our minority team members.

His work challenges orthodox thinking in the field of diversity and inclusion. He is invited to speak at conferences regularly most recently to speak at the Biased Science event at the Royal Institution.

He has worked with senior leadership teams in many organisations including Citigroup, AXA, Rio Tinto, UBS, Cabinet Office, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The search industry

It’s almost two years on from the much-heralded Parker Review, in which a central recommendation was that “Each FTSE 100 Board should have at least one director of colour by 2021, and each FTSE 250 Board should have at least one director of colour by 2024.”

But progress seems to be going backwards. Anthony Simpson, Head of Media Practice at Global Exec Search firm, Savannah Group, states “There’s no chance the goals set in the Parker Report will happen within their timeframes.”

Regular Inclusion contributor Patricia Hamzahee expressed her frustration like this.“Nothing has moved forward since the Parker Review. Headhunters aren’t speaking to any of the top black business leaders I know, so who are they speaking to?”

Where does the problem lie? Is there simply a lack of diverse talent ready to take on leadership roles?

The Parker Review again. “One of the common refrains … is that “there are not enough capable and qualified candidates”. We do not believe that such a conclusion is accurate. Such assumptions are outdated.”. There have been several reports published (incl. Green Park’s) that highlighted hundreds of high-calibre, “Board-ready” candidates.

Hamzahee expands further “The Search sector isn’t even at the stage where they’re trying to understand how to change. I was at an event recently designed to address Black representation on FTSE Boards. The Search firm who organised the event, didn’t even bother to ask those present, who were the cream of black business leaders, the UK diversity brain-bank, about the challenges they face or the potential solutions. But instead, suggested they “polish up their CV’s”. How about that for losing a room?”

Table: A selection of the overall representation of Directors of the colour of the FTSE 100, end of July 2017 as reported in the Parker Review.

Company

Number of directors

Ethnic Minority Directors

BT

13

0

Lloyds Banking Group

12

0

Legal & General

10

0

Whitbread

10

0

BAE Systems

9

0

Rentokill

9

0

EasyJet

9

0

Informa

9

0

Royal Mail

8

0

Hargreaves Lansdown

7

0

Why is the change in search needed?

“In the US, for every 10% increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior-executive team, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rise 0.8%. Also, companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.”

The Parker Report also sets out the commercial opportunity: “The FTSE 100 derives more than 75% of its sales from outside the UK. Between 2015-2050, one-half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in nine countries, five of which are in Africa and three in Asia.” And with estimated lost revenue of £48B due to lack of languages, it seems an obvious commercial case.

Yet “UK directors of colour represent only 2% of directors in FTSE boardrooms. 51 out of the FTSE 100 companies do not have any directors of colour. Only six people of colour hold the position of Chair or CEO as of end-July 2017.”

Why isn’t the situation changing?

Two reasons:

Access: To be effective at Search you need to have built a network, which takes time. Search firms in the UK are almost entirely run or owned by privately educated white people. Unless they started investing in building a diverse network some time ago, they just won’t have diversity in their network. Expecting them to find diverse candidates is unrealistic.

How Businesses choose their Search Partner: The search process can last a long time and involves a close working partnership between client and search partners. Understandably businesses will choose search partners they feel comfortable with and who ‘get’ their culture. Which often leads them to choose people who are like them to conduct their Search Briefs. Those people are unlikely to have diverse networks.

The Recruitment Industry

Businesses say they want talent with an entrepreneurial spirit, learning agility, resilience, proactiveness and creativity – qualities perceived to be lacking in traditional talent pools these days. Yet these qualities are found in abundance in diverse, state-educated communities. So why does BAME talent struggle to get into great early years’ roles?

Why isn’t recruitment changing?

Recruitment is mostly a high volume, low margin, process-driven business that is pressurised and target driven. Recruiters, therefore, tend to present what they think the client wants.

The recruitment model rewards those who present clients with candidates who ‘fit’ the brief. But the really successful recruiters present clients with candidates who fit the brief AND fit the culture. If clients are not demanding change and crucially, when presented with different candidates do not hire them, because they don’t ‘fit’, there is no incentive to change.

“The model is broken and will remain so until the incentives change. It’s only rational for a commercial organisation to put forward the most likely applicant to get hired. Biases exist in the employer as well as the recruiter. Unless the client starts to be more proactive about embracing the benefits of difference not much will change.”

What’s the solution?

People claim that tech will be the solution. And no doubt it represents the future. But with AI in the press recently for built-in bias, tech promises much but may not hold all the answers.

In our opinion, it starts with the client. There are already lots of examples of good practice, such as being explicit about your expectations on the diversity of candidates on shortlists; setting incentives or penalties if those aren’t met; interview panel coaching and training; ensuring diverse panels and exposing decision-makers to diverse talent outside of the formal processes etc.

However, all this the explicit positive work will be undermined by the ‘Culture Fit’ if not overtly dealt with. The important idea here is this.

Businesses have to become more comfortable with the much-needed benefits that different sorts of talent bring over the discomfort caused by their lack of cultural fit. Or as Hamzahee pointed out in her previous article, ‘cultural add’.

The danger of hiring for cultural fit is that search and recruitment tend to find people who will ’fit in’ but not necessarily talent who will drive the business forward or have cultural impact. E.G. Do they really want to hire a brilliant tech-savvy Somali graduate, or will they be too uncomfortable working around his afternoon prayer needs and his lack of polish/London accent etc.

Solution: Cultural add over cultural fit

Businesses could recruit for ‘values fit’ or ‘cultural add’ over ‘cultural fit’.

The great thing about ‘values fit’ is that it is more inclusive and significantly widens the net of interesting and different sorts of talent. Talent that could both fit the explicit and declared values of the organisation, but also help drive and prepare the organisation for a different future.

Move forward with your diversity recruitment strategy

Send this now to your HR teams and decision makers. We work in partnership with top firms to attract and progress the best diverse talent.

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]]>54922Don’t tell me I’m lucky to get this far. Being diverse is an advantage.https://arrivaleducate.com/2019/07/10/dont-tell-me-im-lucky-to-get-this-far-being-black-woman-is-an-advantage/
Wed, 10 Jul 2019 15:45:59 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=54910Growing up on the Old Kent Road, you might assume that being diverse, is a disadvantage. I believe it to be an advantage.

Christina Ajose, member of the Arrival Network, writes for our Talent Talks. In her article, she shares her experiences growing up as an immigrant black woman, but she also tells us not to confuse our biases with her good fortune of being diverse.

Growing up as a young, black woman, from an immigrant family in an inner-city community, diversity obviously played a key role in shaping my life narrative.

At certain points on my journey from The Old Kent Road to Corporate UK, I’ve been reminded, implicitly and explicitly, that I’m “lucky” to have achieved what I have. Sure, we all need a little luck. But my being ‘lucky’ hints at something else. What they’re actually saying is – I didn’t get where I am today on merit.

“The day I stop counting how many other black women are in the room, is the day I know businesses have been bold enough to do more than the bare minimum.”

Difference makes you different

Growing up on The Old Kent Road, as an immigrant black woman, you might assume that being diverse is a disadvantage. But in spite of the challenges, I firmly believe it to be an advantage.Let me explain.

My education and career were at times challenging. The state-school I went to required metal detectors for weapons. I was often the only person of colour in job interviews. I understood that I had to work twice as hard as the other kids. But my ‘challenging experiences’ also helped me develop skills and insights that you just wouldn’t get otherwise.

Being diverse has been both a ‘cloak and a cape’. I’ve had the benefit of the deep familial and cultural richness of my African roots. But it’s also empowered me to be Western, European, English, a South Londoner, a University Student and now a young professional. This has allowed me to look at the world through many different lenses. To consider multiple, varied viewpoints.

What people don’t always understand about being diverse is that it requires a certain level of resilience.

I’ve achieved so much because of my diversity, not in spite of it. I feel it has given me superwoman like powers. Resilience being just one superpower.

My other issue with the ‘lucky’ label is that it implies that it’s unusual to find talented black women from my community, which it is not.

The label undermines the amount of work I did to get here. The risks and opportunities I took. The difficult decisions I made. How I embraced being outside my comfort zone. All to my benefit in hindsight.

My being ‘lucky’ also hints at the fact that my success is formulaic. Ripe for process and scale. That my ‘luck’ once understood, can somehow be captured, packaged and turned into a process, replicated with the next ‘lucky’ young black talented immigrant woman.

Companies need to invest in diverse talent early

If I indeed did have any luck, it was to find myself on Arrival Education’s Success for Life career programme. I didn’t know or have any role models with successful careers, so success wasn’t a very tangible concept for me. But the opportunities and development I had working with Arrival Education played a significant role in where I am today.

Businesses offering workshops and mentoring, helped me break the invisible barrier of ‘them, over there’ and ‘me, over here’. It allowed me to become a leader. The level of investment Arrival Education and their corporate partners put into those of us on the programme is directly reflected in how successful my contemporaries on the programme have become. We’re all forging great careers. I don’t think that’s down to luck. It’s down to the amount of talent in our communities and businesses being open to that talent.

I won’t be settling

Although I have achieved a lot career-wise, I’m nowhere near where I want to be. Why should I settle?

Now at Deloitte, I feel a sense of duty to move the diversity narrative, further along, to ask “what can companies do to make diversity more than just a target or quota?”

I’m lucky to be part of a great team, with different backgrounds and skillsets. I know this isn’t necessarily the same for every business or department. When I speak to my diverse friends, there’s still a significant disconnect between what businesses present in their marketing, and what they are really like to work for.

The talent acquisition strategy needs to evolve

For organisations to flourish they need a diverse mix of talent to drive innovation and growth. My firm, like others, is making headway in this. But like most change, it takes time.

Businesses need to think differently about how they enrich their workforce. This takes changing how they think about talent. Perhaps if they freed themselves from the chains of grades, degree and university name. Instead, thought more about the quality, value and impact an individual can make to their business, they would make more headway

The day I stop counting how many other black women are in the room, is the day I know businesses have been bold enough to do more than the bare minimum.

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The Inclusion is honoured to have guest contributor, Mark Lomas. Mark is a thought leader, well known and respected in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion sphere.

Is Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) progressing fast enough?

EDI is a broad topic and there is an established consensus that it is good for business. However, if you ask many diversity professionals they will gladly tell you that progress is too slow.

A quick review of FTSE 100 board diversity will reinforce that point of view. But it’s not just FTSE 100 companies or board level diversity alone. In fact, bar the odd exception, if you look at the senior leadership teams of most organisations, you can quickly determine that the people leading them rarely reflect the communities they serve.

So why is progress so slow? I believe it can be quantified in two areas: will and skill.

Behaviours need to match the rhetoric

Firstly, the will to improve EDI.

On one hand, it is fairly rare to hear a view from business leaders that EDI isn’t important. Leaders talk about equality, diversity, inclusion, opportunity and have developed strong rhetoric along these themes.

It is a long and hard road to transform culture, practices and behaviours, in order to support an inclusive ethos, and build a diverse workforce.

Many organisations seek to transform their organisations from where they are today to an inclusive culture, with a diverse workforce and leadership, without allocating a budget for EDI, or try and do this with little or no financial investment at all. They wouldn’t entertain the thought of approaching digital transformation in the same way.

“Being led from the top down” is often trotted out as a mantra for embedding EDI but many times it’s a hollow sentiment; because accountability is completely missing. I wonder how many readers can honestly say that their leadership teams have performance related EDI objectives for which they are accountable?

Leaders need to lead

At HS2, all senior leaders have a performance related EDI objective of completing the reverse mentoring programme. This is 12 sessions per year paired with a diverse junior member of staff from a different part of the business. This year 166 people are involved in our reverse mentoring: this is nearly 10% of the company. In addition to reverse mentoring; all of our senior leadership team are accountable for ensuring that everyone in their directorate completes mandatory training (including EDI) and attends a minimum of one EDI engagement event during the year, this is embedded into all staff objectives.

Our senior leaders are accountable for personally participating and facilitating engagement with EDI. It is part of the core performance expectation.

Without accountability progress is slow. The will for leadership to be accountable is often missing.

Embedding change

Let’s now turn our attention to the 2nd factor – the skill to enable change.

Having the data on how your organisational processes work, undertaking the analysis, and disrupting traditional processes is a key factor in success.

At HS2 we found using traditional selection methods, women and BAME applicants were more likely to be unsuccessful at the shortlisting stage. Having identified the issue we changed the process to facilitate improving diversity of hire.

The above data demonstrates disproportionate trends at the shortlist/interview stage for BAME groups. All other groups demonstrate proportionate results at the shortlisting/ interview stage. The percentage of ‘not held’ data for ethnicity at the shortlist/hire stage is 20% and for gender is 25% View the report.

This is not removing the name from a CV or application. Instead, Blind Auditioning removes the CV or application form entirely and replaces it with skills based assessment derived from the job description, and is curated by the hiring line manager. Utilising the “blind audition” process, shortlisting success for women jumped from 17% – 47%. For BAME groups, shortlisting success rose from 14% to 50% – and this was all based on technical competence for the role. Results at the hire stage were also impressive with diverse groups more than 20% more likely to be successful.

You could say we treated recruitment like an engineering problem. We found the point of system failure and changed the mechanism to ensure it worked.

Data, data, data

Unfortunately, and all too often, it is the basic lack of data that means developing informed, focussed interventions simply isn’t possible, and is where many organisations come unstuck.

Another common factor is that those who are responsible for EDI often do not have the authority to make real change. This can be as a result of being confined to junior positions in an HR department, or as is regularly the case, are enthusiastic amateurs with little of the technical knowledge of equality diversity & inclusion required to facilitate the stated desire for change.

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]]>54842Is D&I the new tech?https://arrivaleducate.com/2019/06/06/is-diversity-and-inclusion-the-new-tech/
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 15:56:56 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=54808The post Is D&I the new tech? appeared first on Arrival Education.
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Are business leaders about to make the same mistakes with D&I as they did with tech?

Thanks to the likes of Pepsi, H&M and Uber, (interchangeable with any number of top firms including Starbucks, Sephora & Prada), we have all seen that businesses need to get D&I strategy and execution right. Otherwise, they will face significant commercial and reputational risks. Yet many businesses are still trying to deliver their D&I agendas on the cheap, usually as a sideline activity, with no real investment.

When D&I can deliver such startling business benefits as a 33% over performance against competitors this approach is perplexing.

Why would business leaders ignore such an opportunity? To make sense of this, we cast our minds back to the 90s and the early days of tech.

In the beginning, many traditional businesses just didn’t understand what tech meant. Technology, for most, was usually something that ‘techie’ people did and had little to do with the leadership team.

‘Cutting-edge’ for many companies involved building a website, developing an intranet few people used and rolling-out Microsoft office. The IT department was a strange place, filled with ‘back office’ people that no-one really understood, who were just called upon to sort out desktop issues.

Only forward-looking leaders realised that for businesses to survive, they needed to be built around tech. Those leaders went on to change their entire business models.

Nowadays, the ‘techie’ people are running the world and many previously successful businesses have been disrupted or have become obsolete.

In the same way, many leaders still see diversity as an ‘over there’ issue that sits with HR, or with a board member who has a personal passion. Very few business leaders that we speak to, can genuinely articulate how business-critical D&I is. They certainly aren’t grasping the seismic shift in organisational culture, recruitment practices and day-to-day behaviours required to deliver it successfully. And even fewer understand that for any change to happen they need to prioritise and resource it properly. They just don’t seem to understand that D&I is the next significant market movement.

The leaders who made the leap into transforming their businesses got tech-immersed themselves. They invested in new and radical ideas, some of which didn’t work. They engaged with specialists and ruthlessly looked at every part of their business and their markets. Using the prism of tech transformation, they weren’t afraid to make difficult decisions and set different directions.

Leaders who want to harness the power of diversity, need to do the same.

Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again and expecting different results

As with the early days of tech, many mainstream businesses are at risk of missing out on this new market opportunity. Leaders, it seems, have not learnt from the lessons of tech taught us. Instead, they seem to be waiting for D&I to become business critical to properly invest.

How many businesses that no longer exist, thought that tech was a passing fad?

But most businesses aren’t changing. They might say they want different talent coming through but fall back to using the same filters that recruit the same sort of people, from the same backgrounds, in the same way. Or, perhaps worse, they hire in lots of diverse talent, but don’t change their culture and the talent leaves. Too many businesses are still viewing diversity as a tick-box exercise, rather than a core pillar of their strategy.

How can businesses think differently without diversity at their core?

Unlocking the diversity dividend

Unfortunately, the D&I agenda has evolved in an ad-hoc way, leading to disjointed thinking and non-aligned activities, that might look good in a report but don’t lead to any real change.

If businesses really want to drive innovation they need people who are different from the current norm. We often hear people say that they can’t find great diverse talent. Yet, the talent we work with has entrepreneurship, resilience and creative drive in abundance.

With so much at stake, it’s surprising how poorly businesses are still thinking about their D&I

approach. Many large corporations who were behind the curve on tech tried to play catch up by buying tech businesses, for often eye-watering sums. Almost all of those businesses have failed. Why? Because in the main, business had not undergone the radical organisational change required. This won’t be an option for diversity as corporates won’t be able to buy in smaller more diverse firms and reap the benefits.

We hope that leaders can learn from the lessons of tech before it is too late.

‘Is D&I the New Tech?’ was written by Co-Founders Daniel Snell and Emily Shenton with contributions from Matt Cooper.

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Written for the Inclusion by Rick Bacon, CEO Aqua Metrology Systems. In 2018 he was awarded a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara where his dissertation focused on internships and social networks.

We live in a society where having a meaningful, well-paid job determines where and how we live. It defines our access to homeownership, healthcare and education and what we spend on travel, entertainment and consumer goods. In other words, the type of employment we have, and our social mobility, are inseparable.

In this article, I will discuss how internships play a key role in driving social mobility.

Catch 22

One of the first hurdles a work entrant encounters is that employees want people with work experience. But how do young people, especially those from underserved and underrepresented communities, get that first job?

Internships have emerged as a way that young people can begin the transition from formal education to employment. They provide young people with an invaluable opportunity to understand the company, its values and what working there is really like. And for employers, internships offer them a less costly way of assessing new talent. So, for both, it is a ‘try before you buy’ opportunity that can help reduce the high first-year drop-out rates of graduate recruits.

40%

Of those had to decline internships said external barriers, such as being unable to afford it, or being unable to move to a city were the deciding factor.

Access to internships are not equal

The problem is that access to internships is not equal. The evidence is that internships are found through the personal networks of the student and their family. Under-privileged students rarely have these networks. Neither are they as cognisant of the fact that they need internships to get into prestigious companies. And even if they do know this fact they don’t know how to navigate the recruitment process. This means that these students do not have access to one of the first, and arguably most valuable, rungs on the career ladder. Companies are also denied the opportunity to bring such young people into their recruitment pipeline.

*Figure from Pay As You Go?Internship pay, quality and access in the graduate jobs market by the Sutton Trust, 2018.

Middle-class graduates are more likely to find a placement through personal contacts. Certain high paying professions, such as Law and Finance are nearly 40% reliant upon their connections. This is indicative of middle-class young people having the networks and the social and cultural capital to promote themselves and find opportunities. It’s also important to note that 68% of internships gained through contacts were unpaid, ruling out many young people from underserved communities who would not be able to support themselves through the programme.

The ‘Diversity ‘Dividend’

We live in a society where companies are recognising the benefits that diversity can bring – the so-called ‘Diversity Dividend’. It’s proven that diversity offers increased value in every aspect of work, this includes – leadership, decision-making, product development, market insight and access, as well as sales and customer support.

For many organisations, making the transition to a more inclusive workforce requires many changes. Those changes are both attitudinal and behavioural and are required at all levels of the business. From this perspective, the needs of young diverse people are highly compatible with businesses seeking to become more inclusive.

But with internship opportunities going predominantly to young, well-connected people from privileged backgrounds, it only serves to filter out the difference, not filter it in.

How companies benefit from internships

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) Development Survey 2017 showed that 20% of graduates leave by the first year of completing a graduate programme. Faced by these very high drop-out rates for graduate employees, companies are turning to internships as a recruitment and assessment tool.

Internships provide the company with valuable insight into the young person’s work ethic, attitude, inquisitiveness, ability to work in a team, problem-solving ability, communication skills, willingness to adapt and learn, etc. Moreover, companies are aware of how competitive securing an internship can be, so it has also become a filtering indicator of a young person’s persistence, grit and determination.

Additionally, internships offer the opportunity for engaged employees to become coaches and mentors to the young interns. Staff are often thrown into this supporting role, with little or no training, obliging them to adapt to working with a youthful ‘newbie’. The evidence is that the interesting and inquisitive young person will stretch the coach more, thanks to their different beliefs, opinions or ways of working, than those of their colleagues and peers.

This can lead to interesting and thought-provoking questions about existing and perhaps stale ways of ‘doing’ things, which now get a new, and fresh perspective. It also allows for a better understanding of the company’s ‘diversity-readiness’.

40%

Of those who had to decline internships said external barriers, such as being unable to afford it, or being unable to move to a city were the deciding factor.

Making internships a driver of social mobility

Improved social mobility is closely tied to young people from underserved and underrepresented groups obtaining access to meaningful well-paid employment. For this to happen, these young people must have access to the best internships. These work experiences can assist them in both understanding the type of career they want and increasing their chances of securing a job.

Most companies now expect a potential recruit to have had at least one (often more) internships. In an increasingly competitive employment market, having an internship has become a ‘must have’ requirement for businesses. Companies perceive people with internships, as those who are more likely to be ‘work ready’.

Theoretically, everyone should benefit from internships.

The trouble is that quality internships are accessed by those on the ‘inside’ with the right social capital and connections, and exclude those on the outside, namely, the underserved and underrepresented.

By offering internships to diverse people, companies can build a future recruitment pipeline of diverse talent and learn about their ‘diversity-readiness’. This also helps them understand the changes they must make if they’re to impact social mobility, fulfil their side of the social contract, and earn their slice of the diversity dividend.

Rick Bacon is passionate about the value of internship programmes for young people and forward-thinking companies. As a business leader, he can vouch for the transformative power of internships for young people from diverse backgrounds and for the employees they encounter. Rick grew up on a farm and, in securing a place at Cambridge University, gained access to an international career path. He is currently CEO of Aqua Metrology Systems, a California based water technology start-up. In 2018 he was awarded a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara where his dissertation focused on internships and social networks.

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]]>54792Gilbert tell his journey from underserved East London to Successful Entrepreneurhttps://arrivaleducate.com/2019/06/06/underserved-young-people-dont-get-equal-access-to-jobs/
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 09:39:22 +0000https://arrivaleducate.com/?p=54772There are talented, brilliant young people from underserved communities. But they don’t get access to the same opportunities and lack the knowledge of how to get there. Gilbert shares why.

Gilbert Sabakaki joined the Arrival Network when he was 14 through our flagship 4-year programme Success For Life. He now runs his own company. In his article, he sets out some of the challenges of growing up in an underserved community.

The wrong role models

My early years were affected by the usual challenges that you face growing up in an inner-city London area like Hackney; the high crime rate, lack of opportunities and absence of positive role models.

When I was younger, my only goal was to get rich and move my family out of the neighbourhood and into a better situation. But in my community, even if you have ambition, it’s really hard to break out.

I began working Arrival Education with 2 of my closest school friends. They stopped coming and dropped out. Fast forward 10 years, one of them is just completing a near decade long jail sentence and the other was murdered in 2013.

Growing up, my friends and I saw cars and jewellery as signs of success. The people who seemed to get ahead, and who we saw as ‘successful’, were often involved in crime. As a young man, that creates a bit of a mental barrier. You feel that following in their footsteps is the only way to achieve success. But actually, we didn’t even know that other options were even available.

Changing my outlook

Which is why one of my proudest moments to date, was the change I made in my mindset when still at school.

I realised I could change my own future. I didn’t need to wait for circumstances or other people to change. I understood that I had a decision to make about the sort of future I wanted.

I understood too that only I alone could make THAT decision. So, I made it. In that process, doors started to open for me. I also discovered that there were alternative ways to achieve your goals and ambitions than a life of crime.

Because of this change, I have achieved a great deal. I am an entrepreneur now, running my own company. That wouldn’t have been possible without some sort of a change in my beliefs and outlook on life.

The support and access I needed

I started working with Arrival Education when I was 14. Arrival presented their ‘Success for Life’ programme at my secondary school, in Bow. On the programme, I was introduced to people who had achieved much more success through working in business and with far less risk, than anyone in my area. As soon as I realised there were alternative ways to achieve the success I wanted, I started changing my thinking and behaviour. I realised if you put yourself in the right position, with the right grades, with the right attitude, you can achieve as much as the next person.

When I originally started with Arrival, I began with 2 of my closest school friends. But they didn’t see the value of the programme. They didn’t give it a chance. They stopped coming and dropped out. Fast forward 10 years, one of them is just completing a near decade long jail sentence and the other was murdered in 2013.

I’m aware that had I not changed my outlook, I too would have probably had a very similar life journey.

The advantage of the middle-class

I have worked full time for a number of corporate style organisations since then. The most recent was at The Financial Reporting Council. I was the only person from my background in the main part of the business. But thanks to my prior experience with Arrival I found I could get along with my work colleagues there and I didn’t feel at a disadvantage. I felt more than capable of fulfilling the roles I had.

However, it was obvious how much of an advantage being middle-class and privileged is, compared to being from a low-income background. Whilst at the FRC, I came to realise that there is plenty of state educated, diverse talent that are far smarter, entrepreneurial and driven than those from private schools.

As soon as I realised there were alternative ways to achieve the success I wanted, I started changing my thinking and behaviour. I realised if you put yourself in the right position, with the right grades, with the right attitude, you can achieve as much as the next person.

I understand from my work experience and other interactions with businesses and senior executives that these ‘traditional’ organisations are genuinely trying to attract diverse talent.

However, people from my communities lack the knowledge, guidance, and the support required to successfully transition into the best companies and roles. I feel that if top companies genuinely want to attract interesting diverse talent, they must approach it in better ways than they currently are.

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